Teaching Your Kids About Disabilities: Getting it Right

*Remunerated Post*

As your children grow up and start to ask questions about the world, it’s your job as a parent to give them the right answers. So, how can you teach them about disabilities?

For children growing up, they may notice people who are a little different around them, and they’ll likely have questions about this. As a parent, you need to make sure your child knows that having a disability makes people no different than anyone else underneath.

This can make life easier for those parents who have children with disabilities and need to claim compensation for a child with cerebral palsy, or other disability, just to get by. It can also help the person with the disability feel more included, by breaking the stigma surrounding their unique qualities.

In this post, we’re going to cover everything you should teach your kids about disabilities to make them more accepting, and ease the stress of parents with disabled children.

What Do Your Kids Need to Know About Disabilities?

To give disabled children the best chance of being accepted in society, we need to teach our kids to understand them. Here are the best ways to do that:

1. Explain that it’s okay to be different

When you’re a kid, especially as you start to get older, you want to be anything but different. Finding a way to fit in with your peers is part of growing up, but this can be hard for someone who has disabilities.

Teaching your child that being different is okay, and actually a good thing because it means they have something that other people don’t, will make them want to be friends with those who have disabilities.

However, your child might find it hard to socialise with someone who has a disability. So, it’s important to emphasise their good qualities, like how happy they are and how they want to make people smile.

2. Emphasise their similarities

To make sure you don’t go overboard with the ‘children with disabilities are different’ take, you should also emphasise that they are also similar to your child in lots of ways.

Children with disabilities still have feelings, like to have fun, love their families, and can have hobbies. To really drive the last point home, try to find hobbies they have that are similar to your child, even if it’s just ‘playing with toys’.

The important thing here is to emphasise that a person’s physical characteristics don’t define who they are. There is a lot more to be found under the surface if your child just takes the time to look for it.

3. Clarify that people with disabilities aren’t sick

From the way you’re discussing children with disabilities, and from what your child might hear from others, they’re likely to get the impression that those children are sick.

To prevent your child from thinking this in the first place, make sure you don’t use the word ‘sick’. Also try to avoid saying that something ‘is wrong’ with a child because it has the same connotations.

If your child has gotten this impression anyway, either from you or from someone else, you need to sit them down and clarify that a disability is not a sickness or something they can catch. A disability makes a child unique; it doesn’t make them less than any other child.

4. Encourage them to ask questions

As anyone who’s a parent, or spends time around children, will tell you, kids are naturally curious. They want to know why things are a certain way so they can make sense of the world and grow up to be functioning, intelligent adults.

Getting in the way of this curiosity by shutting down a question you think is too rude to ask is not the way to go. Making a topic taboo only ‘others’ the people the questions are being asked about, namely the children with disabilities.

Also, it’s okay to not know the answers, and most parents of disabled children are more than happy to talk about their child’s disability with your child. If you’re not in a situation where you can ask a parent, tell your kid you’ll look into it for them and get back to them.

5. Address and condemn bullying

It’s not nice to think about, but children bully each other all the time. Sometimes they do it to fit in with kids who are inclined to bully because of their difficult home life, and other times it’s because they don’t want to be seen as outcasts themselves.

Whatever the reason, bullying is not okay and unfortunately children with disabilities are easy targets. Talk to your child and make sure they know that hurting another child, either emotionally or physically, is always wrong.

You can use what you told them earlier about how children with disabilities have feelings just like them, and that they wouldn’t be very happy if it was the other way round. If you suspect they’ve already engaged in this behaviour, make them apologise to the child.

6. Treat any equipment they use with respect

Children with disabilities often have specific equipment that helps them go about their day. This could be a cane, wheelchair, service dog, hearing aid or any other equipment.

Make sure your child knows that this equipment is not a toy, and that even if the child with disabilities allows them to play with it, it’s still not a good idea. This can be especially hard with service dogs, but you just need to remind your child that this specific dog is not a pet.

Is This Everything my Child Should Know About Disabilities?

In this post, we’ve shared the main things you need to tell your child to teach them about disabilities and make sure they are respectful of people who have them.

As you’re teaching your kids about this, they might find new questions to ask along the way. As long as you make sure your responses are positive, you should be able to answer most of them quite easily. This openness is sure to break the stigma, and create an inclusive environment for all.